chenjichenji
JF-Expert Member
- Jul 18, 2013
- 1,755
- 3,451
Haahaaaaa huu ni wito...Huu uzi ulivyo mrefu ukichanganya na hiyo lugha,mh
Haahaaaaa huu ni wito...Huu uzi ulivyo mrefu ukichanganya na hiyo lugha,mh
Uzi mtam Sana huu ukiusoma umetuliaHuu uzi ulivyo mrefu ukichanganya na hiyo lugha,mh
Wee jamaaa....Kesho na mimi nakuja na mada yangu inayosema 'Prostitutes and sex in JF'.
Watu hawajui kuwa Catholisim is Satanism! Creator mkubwa wa yanayoendelea duniani leo yanamilikiwa na Vatican.Hii dunia Ni tambala bovu,
Kanisa takatifu liliufanya ukahaba Kama mradi na kutoza kodi
"Ironically nearly all of the buildings where sex was sold were owned by the Bishop of Winchester giving rise to the rather gentle euphemism of prostitutes being named “Winchester Geese.” Venereal diseases were often known as “bites of Winchester geese.” Certainly the prostitutes were tolerated by the Bishops, for the brothels were highly taxed and upped their income"
Soma tu utuwakilishe mwenzetuUzi mtam Sana huu ukiusoma umetulia
Umeandika maneno mazito yakufikirisha SanaWatu hawajui kuwa Catholisim is Satanism! Creator mkubwa wa yanayoendelea duniani leo yanamilikiwa na Vatican.
The Rothchilds ambao wanamiliki migodi ya Dhahabu na Almasi kwa hapa Tanzania, campuni zile zote NorthMara, Barrick gold nk zote zina connection na Hiyo family ya Illuminati ndo funders wakubwa wa siasa zinazoendelea Tanzania, hata marehemu muda wote kuwategemea Maaskofu wa dini..wakati hao ndo kuna majoka yenye sumu yalipojifichia...
Unakwama wapi na wewe kuwakilisha mkuuSoma tu utuwakilishe mwenzetu
Nakwama kwenye 'wito' mkuuUnakwama wapi na wewe kuwakilisha mkuu
Nina uhakika kqa 99% mleta mada hii habari hata wewe hujaisoma yote kabla ya kuileta hapa.Prostitutes and sex in Medieval England.
(Some of our new followers may have missed this post).
..... If you are easily offended then perhaps best to give this one a miss.
“As for you, be fruitful and multiply; populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it .…” Genesis 9:7.
Prostitution is one of the oldest trades in the world and even today, sex sells. When looking back at the medieval era it is tempting and somewhat romantic to see it purely as a time of fair ladies and the proverbial knight in shining armour. The truth is rather less quaint. In medieval England sex was then, as it is now, a very big part of society. It was the norm for men to have sex with whomever they pleased and bastard children were common. Many famous lords had a bastard child or two and nobody cared. Warwick the Kingmaker for example fathered an illegitimate daughter Margaret, John of Gaunt had five bastard children, a daughter with one of his Mothers ladies in waiting and then the four Beaufort’s with his long term mistress and eventual third wife Katheryn Swynford, Richard III had two bastard children, Edward IV had at least four, possibly five. Edward III is known to have had a son with his mistress Alice Perrers, the Black Prince also had bastard children, and Henry IV is known to have fathered one also. These are just well known instances and as stated, common. Men had a sexual freedom that women did not have and even today there are lingering double standards for men and women.
There was a flourishing trade of prostitution in medieval England. The law on prostitution was never clear and for the most part the law, when it did act on prostitution, did not seek to bring the trade to an end, rather it saw the selling of sex as a necessary evil and sought to control it. As noted, there was no clear definition of prostitution or even what made a woman be classed as a prostitute. In effect, any woman unfortunate to be accused of ‘light’ behaviour whether guilty or no could actually be classed in the eyes of the law as a whore which alongside ‘bawd’ was the common word for prostitute. A woman who had multiple sexual partners could also be classed as a whore, that is, prostitute even if no money was not exchanged and the woman had sex with various men quite simply for pleasure.
Prostitution appears to have left the Church in something of a quandary. Much ink was spilt over the matter, with the subdean of Salisbury, Thomas of Chobham (d. circa 1233/6) seeking to categorise women –and men- selling their bodies for sex. He decided that if a woman was giving herself to just one man, or in secret then she was not – strictly speaking - a prostitute. He defined the role of a prostitute as “a woman who sells herself openly to the lusts of many.” There was much debate over what to do with the money earned through selling herself for sex, and it was the aforementioned Thomas of Chobham who stated –rather controversially- that as the woman has gained the money through the labour of her body then she is entitled to keep it. Prostitution, already an old, old trade thus gained a degree of commercialism. These ‘fallen women’ could earn money by having sex and quite rightly, keep it.
Officially, a woman found guilty of being a whore, that is, selling her body for sex or making her home available for others to have sex within- usually for a charge, was supposed to do penance. For a first offence she was to wear a hood, either striped or yellow, her hair was cut off or shaved and she was taken to the pillory. A second offence was anything up to ten days in prison and a third; banishment from the city. Although there are records of this happening, it doesn’t seem to have been particularly well enforced. Medieval records show that the same women, over and over are charged with ‘bawdry’ and fined increasing sums, however the majority of these women do not seem to have been forced from their homes and were so confident that they repeat offended with impunity. It was generally concurred within the church that prostitutes were a necessary evil, for a man who wanted to ‘slake wicked lust’ could visit a brothel rather than resorting to rape. This in turn protected respectable women. Prostitutes also were available for physicians to learn more about the female body and reproductive system as it was quite unthinkable that a respectable married woman or virgin would uncover herself in such a manner.
In larger cities, such as London and York there were repeated attempts to have all prostitutes removed from within the city walls. This was utterly ineffective and instead the women were forced to work within a particular area. The Southwark Stews across the river from the city of London was one such place. Large volumes of Flemish women worked in as many as eighteen separate establishments offering hot baths and one would imagine – a whole lot more- for a man willing to pay. Ironically nearly all of the buildings where sex was sold were owned by the Bishop of Winchester giving rise to the rather gentle euphemism of prostitutes being named “Winchester Geese.” Venereal diseases were often known as “bites of Winchester geese.” Certainly the prostitutes were tolerated by the Bishops, for the brothels were highly taxed and upped their income.
Other areas in London, particularly near Cheapside also became known for the high volume of prostitutes and street names such as “Gropecunt Lane” or “Cocks Lane” brazenly advertised what was happening at these locations. York, Shrewsbury and other towns are known to have had their own ‘Gropecunt Lanes’ before the names were changed to Grape Lane or Grope Lane for decency’s sake in later years.
The medieval attitude towards sex was not as restrictive as one would think. Sexual desire and the act of sex is one of the most primal of human instincts and often won out over piety and ones reputation within society. Historical fiction on the whole is not representative of sex within the medieval period, often showcasing it as romantic act between two lovers, rather than anything remotely seedy and much more often- glossing over the matter completely. Like birth and death, sex was a part of everyday life. People lived in such close quarters with relatively little privacy it perhaps not unsurprising that sex could hardly be a private matter. Children shared beds with their parents, servants shared rooms with their masters or slept outside the door. For a couple, married or no, wishing to have sex, it was very often a semi-public affair.
The actual attitude towards sex, away from the church, was rather more robust. In the 12th and 13th century France there were short stories known as fabliaux which were written to be read aloud to an audience and were usually comedies. These tales were immensely popular and also very crude. They were often anti-clerical in their nature as most tales included a lecherous priest who had a mistress, or several or who practiced bestiality. These witty and often cynical tales included title such as “The Knight who made cunts speak” and “The Maiden who couldn’t hear JamiiForums' Community Engagement Guidelines | Mwongozo wa Ushiriki kwenye Mijadala without heartburn.” (I kid you not.) The church disapproved of sex and it seems that the common people laughed at them for their hypocrisy as priests often made up the majority of regular clientele at brothels. A 14th century English ballad is still extant, and known as ‘The serving girls holiday’ is not as crude as the French fabliaux. An extract;
“Soon he will take me by the hand. And he will lay me on the ground. So that my buttocks are in the dirt. Upon this high holiday. In he thrust and out he drew.”
The implication doesn’t need explaining, and the ballad ends with the serving girl exclaiming that her belly began to swell as round as a bell. The recently discovered court records of an Englishman in 1310/11 who received the rather unfortunate nickname of “fuckebythenavele” could also perhaps be seen as another instance of medieval ribaldry about sex. The historian who found this record speculates that Roger Fuckbythenavel acquired this name after trying to penetrate the belly button of his partner by accident.
The Church had tried to control what people could and couldn’t do in bed (or anywhere else for that matter). The Bishop Burchard of Worms spent a great deal of time writing his Decretum Burchardi, a collection of twenty books dedicated to canon law. One volume was purely about sex and what was and wasn’t allowed. For example, sex was for married couples only, missionary was the only acceptable position for sex as it was thought that it was the least enjoyable. One should also remember that people were told that they should not enjoy sex and that they should only have sex for the begetting of children.
If a woman was on her period, pregnant or nursing a child, then sex was not allowed. Sex was also explicitly banned on fast days, feast days and Sundays. Kissing in a manner that was considered ‘lewd’ (let’s think of a peck on the lips as opposed to making out) was not acceptable. Neither was oral sex. A woman performing oral sex on her husband and swallowing his semen was considered ‘diabolical’ in the eyes of the church and was punishable by seven years of penance. Despite animals mating in the natural way, i.e., from behind, humans doing this was considered unnatural and it was expressly forbidden.
Husbands however did have to fulfil their part of the ‘marital debt’ and satisfy the sexual needs of their wives (for women were seen as lustful creature who quite simply needed to be having sex as much as possible), and they had to do it well, as the Roman physician/surgeon Galen stated that for women get pregnant they had to have reached orgasm. So therefore it was down to the husband to make their lovemaking as enjoyable as possible, which is completely at odds with what the church allowed. However the marital debt was taken seriously for the most part. In 1068, William the Conquerer was forced into releasing Norman knights from campaign after being petitioned by their wives. The reason? They wanted their men home to fulfil their sexual urges.
Burchard goes on to list a great many ‘illegal’ sexual practices which truly go into such detail that one is left wondering how exactly this bishop knew about them to begin with. This list is rather exhaustive and covers everything from masturbation (not allowed to eat meat for four days, unless the ‘defiler’ is a boy who does it a lot, then he is to fast for nearly three weeks and be whipped.) Sodomy wasn’t as serious as bestiality and indeed, there seems to be the general consensus within surviving court records that it was worse to be the passive partner in homosexual sex and play the part of the woman than it was to be the one in the dominant role. However, if the passive partner was an adolescent boy, then it was rather less serious. To have sex with an animal required double the amount of years of penance than sodomy did.
This is a topic that could run for many hundreds of pages, and if there is an interest then I shall come back to this as this is just a tiny glimpse into the medieval thinking about sex. I have not discussed, rape, forced marriage, widows, pimps, cross dressing women, Tudor ideas on sex, medieval aphrodisiacs, midwifery, birth control etc etc.
However, I shall leave you with this. In 14th-century London there was a curious case of a transvestite prostitute. John Rykener was caught having sex with a man (John Brittby) in an alleyway near Sopers Lane in December 1394. He was wearing women’s clothing and referred to himself by the name of Eleanor. This account, unusual in its fullness has Rykener describing how he first became a prostitute in London at a young age and was taught the tricks of the trade by women who also gave him female attire to wear. He further confessed that he had prostituted himself in Oxford where he had sex with many students and priests ‘as a woman.’ It is thought whether his clients, all three knighted, were indeed unaware that ‘Eleanor’ was actually a man. Rykener also confessed that he had had sex with a great many nuns as a man but preferred having sex with priests because they paid more and had had sex with various chaplains in the alleyways round the back of St Katherine’s Church near the Tower of London. He’d also lost count of how many married women he’d fornicated with.
This is probably the least likely conduct to spring to mind when one thinks of medieval people, love, sex, marriage, clerics and suchlike. Desire overcame piety. I suppose that it is thanks to our medieval ancestors' habit of breaking canon law that we are here at all.
HG3
Further reading:
Ruth Mazo Karras, Common Women, Prostitution and sexuality in medieval England.
Ruth Mazo Karras, 'Doing unto Others' Sexuality in medieval Europe.
Alan Haynes, Sex in Elizabethan England.
John W Baldwin, The Language of Sex.
Richard Zacks, History Laid Bare: Love, Sex and Perversity from the Ancient Etruscans to Warren G. Harding.
Ed. Nicola McDonald, Medieval Obscenities.
Mkuu Wade 3 translation hiyo hapo kwa hisani ya google translartor.Huwez kuiweka kwa kiswahili kidogo?
Teyetetttt uongo mwingine bana??? Heee!! Hujasoma hata nukta unasema mzuri.....asa nakuuliza swali....kutoka humo....Uzi mzuri Sana huu
Prostitutes and sex in Medieval England.
(Some of our new followers may have missed this post).
..... If you are easily offended then perhaps best to give this one a miss.
“As for you, be fruitful and multiply; populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it .…” Genesis 9:7.
Prostitution is one of the oldest trades in the world and even today, sex sells. When looking back at the medieval era it is tempting and somewhat romantic to see it purely as a time of fair ladies and the proverbial knight in shining armour. The truth is rather less quaint. In medieval England sex was then, as it is now, a very big part of society. It was the norm for men to have sex with whomever they pleased and bastard children were common. Many famous lords had a bastard child or two and nobody cared. Warwick the Kingmaker for example fathered an illegitimate daughter Margaret, John of Gaunt had five bastard children, a daughter with one of his Mothers ladies in waiting and then the four Beaufort’s with his long term mistress and eventual third wife Katheryn Swynford, Richard III had two bastard children, Edward IV had at least four, possibly five. Edward III is known to have had a son with his mistress Alice Perrers, the Black Prince also had bastard children, and Henry IV is known to have fathered one also. These are just well known instances and as stated, common. Men had a sexual freedom that women did not have and even today there are lingering double standards for men and women.
There was a flourishing trade of prostitution in medieval England. The law on prostitution was never clear and for the most part the law, when it did act on prostitution, did not seek to bring the trade to an end, rather it saw the selling of sex as a necessary evil and sought to control it. As noted, there was no clear definition of prostitution or even what made a woman be classed as a prostitute. In effect, any woman unfortunate to be accused of ‘light’ behaviour whether guilty or no could actually be classed in the eyes of the law as a whore which alongside ‘bawd’ was the common word for prostitute. A woman who had multiple sexual partners could also be classed as a whore, that is, prostitute even if no money was not exchanged and the woman had sex with various men quite simply for pleasure.
Prostitution appears to have left the Church in something of a quandary. Much ink was spilt over the matter, with the subdean of Salisbury, Thomas of Chobham (d. circa 1233/6) seeking to categorise women –and men- selling their bodies for sex. He decided that if a woman was giving herself to just one man, or in secret then she was not – strictly speaking - a prostitute. He defined the role of a prostitute as “a woman who sells herself openly to the lusts of many.” There was much debate over what to do with the money earned through selling herself for sex, and it was the aforementioned Thomas of Chobham who stated –rather controversially- that as the woman has gained the money through the labour of her body then she is entitled to keep it. Prostitution, already an old, old trade thus gained a degree of commercialism. These ‘fallen women’ could earn money by having sex and quite rightly, keep it.
Officially, a woman found guilty of being a whore, that is, selling her body for sex or making her home available for others to have sex within- usually for a charge, was supposed to do penance. For a first offence she was to wear a hood, either striped or yellow, her hair was cut off or shaved and she was taken to the pillory. A second offence was anything up to ten days in prison and a third; banishment from the city. Although there are records of this happening, it doesn’t seem to have been particularly well enforced. Medieval records show that the same women, over and over are charged with ‘bawdry’ and fined increasing sums, however the majority of these women do not seem to have been forced from their homes and were so confident that they repeat offended with impunity. It was generally concurred within the church that prostitutes were a necessary evil, for a man who wanted to ‘slake wicked lust’ could visit a brothel rather than resorting to rape. This in turn protected respectable women. Prostitutes also were available for physicians to learn more about the female body and reproductive system as it was quite unthinkable that a respectable married woman or virgin would uncover herself in such a manner.
In larger cities, such as London and York there were repeated attempts to have all prostitutes removed from within the city walls. This was utterly ineffective and instead the women were forced to work within a particular area. The Southwark Stews across the river from the city of London was one such place. Large volumes of Flemish women worked in as many as eighteen separate establishments offering hot baths and one would imagine – a whole lot more- for a man willing to pay. Ironically nearly all of the buildings where sex was sold were owned by the Bishop of Winchester giving rise to the rather gentle euphemism of prostitutes being named “Winchester Geese.” Venereal diseases were often known as “bites of Winchester geese.” Certainly the prostitutes were tolerated by the Bishops, for the brothels were highly taxed and upped their income.
Other areas in London, particularly near Cheapside also became known for the high volume of prostitutes and street names such as “Gropecunt Lane” or “Cocks Lane” brazenly advertised what was happening at these locations. York, Shrewsbury and other towns are known to have had their own ‘Gropecunt Lanes’ before the names were changed to Grape Lane or Grope Lane for decency’s sake in later years.
The medieval attitude towards sex was not as restrictive as one would think. Sexual desire and the act of sex is one of the most primal of human instincts and often won out over piety and ones reputation within society. Historical fiction on the whole is not representative of sex within the medieval period, often showcasing it as romantic act between two lovers, rather than anything remotely seedy and much more often- glossing over the matter completely. Like birth and death, sex was a part of everyday life. People lived in such close quarters with relatively little privacy it perhaps not unsurprising that sex could hardly be a private matter. Children shared beds with their parents, servants shared rooms with their masters or slept outside the door. For a couple, married or no, wishing to have sex, it was very often a semi-public affair.
The actual attitude towards sex, away from the church, was rather more robust. In the 12th and 13th century France there were short stories known as fabliaux which were written to be read aloud to an audience and were usually comedies. These tales were immensely popular and also very crude. They were often anti-clerical in their nature as most tales included a lecherous priest who had a mistress, or several or who practiced bestiality. These witty and often cynical tales included title such as “The Knight who made cunts speak” and “The Maiden who couldn’t hear JamiiForums' Community Engagement Guidelines | Mwongozo wa Ushiriki kwenye Mijadala without heartburn.” (I kid you not.) The church disapproved of sex and it seems that the common people laughed at them for their hypocrisy as priests often made up the majority of regular clientele at brothels. A 14th century English ballad is still extant, and known as ‘The serving girls holiday’ is not as crude as the French fabliaux. An extract;
“Soon he will take me by the hand. And he will lay me on the ground. So that my buttocks are in the dirt. Upon this high holiday. In he thrust and out he drew.”
The implication doesn’t need explaining, and the ballad ends with the serving girl exclaiming that her belly began to swell as round as a bell. The recently discovered court records of an Englishman in 1310/11 who received the rather unfortunate nickname of “fuckebythenavele” could also perhaps be seen as another instance of medieval ribaldry about sex. The historian who found this record speculates that Roger Fuckbythenavel acquired this name after trying to penetrate the belly button of his partner by accident.
The Church had tried to control what people could and couldn’t do in bed (or anywhere else for that matter). The Bishop Burchard of Worms spent a great deal of time writing his Decretum Burchardi, a collection of twenty books dedicated to canon law. One volume was purely about sex and what was and wasn’t allowed. For example, sex was for married couples only, missionary was the only acceptable position for sex as it was thought that it was the least enjoyable. One should also remember that people were told that they should not enjoy sex and that they should only have sex for the begetting of children.
If a woman was on her period, pregnant or nursing a child, then sex was not allowed. Sex was also explicitly banned on fast days, feast days and Sundays. Kissing in a manner that was considered ‘lewd’ (let’s think of a peck on the lips as opposed to making out) was not acceptable. Neither was oral sex. A woman performing oral sex on her husband and swallowing his semen was considered ‘diabolical’ in the eyes of the church and was punishable by seven years of penance. Despite animals mating in the natural way, i.e., from behind, humans doing this was considered unnatural and it was expressly forbidden.
Husbands however did have to fulfil their part of the ‘marital debt’ and satisfy the sexual needs of their wives (for women were seen as lustful creature who quite simply needed to be having sex as much as possible), and they had to do it well, as the Roman physician/surgeon Galen stated that for women get pregnant they had to have reached orgasm. So therefore it was down to the husband to make their lovemaking as enjoyable as possible, which is completely at odds with what the church allowed. However the marital debt was taken seriously for the most part. In 1068, William the Conquerer was forced into releasing Norman knights from campaign after being petitioned by their wives. The reason? They wanted their men home to fulfil their sexual urges.
Burchard goes on to list a great many ‘illegal’ sexual practices which truly go into such detail that one is left wondering how exactly this bishop knew about them to begin with. This list is rather exhaustive and covers everything from masturbation (not allowed to eat meat for four days, unless the ‘defiler’ is a boy who does it a lot, then he is to fast for nearly three weeks and be whipped.) Sodomy wasn’t as serious as bestiality and indeed, there seems to be the general consensus within surviving court records that it was worse to be the passive partner in homosexual sex and play the part of the woman than it was to be the one in the dominant role. However, if the passive partner was an adolescent boy, then it was rather less serious. To have sex with an animal required double the amount of years of penance than sodomy did.
This is a topic that could run for many hundreds of pages, and if there is an interest then I shall come back to this as this is just a tiny glimpse into the medieval thinking about sex. I have not discussed, rape, forced marriage, widows, pimps, cross dressing women, Tudor ideas on sex, medieval aphrodisiacs, midwifery, birth control etc etc.
However, I shall leave you with this. In 14th-century London there was a curious case of a transvestite prostitute. John Rykener was caught having sex with a man (John Brittby) in an alleyway near Sopers Lane in December 1394. He was wearing women’s clothing and referred to himself by the name of Eleanor. This account, unusual in its fullness has Rykener describing how he first became a prostitute in London at a young age and was taught the tricks of the trade by women who also gave him female attire to wear. He further confessed that he had prostituted himself in Oxford where he had sex with many students and priests ‘as a woman.’ It is thought whether his clients, all three knighted, were indeed unaware that ‘Eleanor’ was actually a man. Rykener also confessed that he had had sex with a great many nuns as a man but preferred having sex with priests because they paid more and had had sex with various chaplains in the alleyways round the back of St Katherine’s Church near the Tower of London. He’d also lost count of how many married women he’d fornicated with.
This is probably the least likely conduct to spring to mind when one thinks of medieval people, love, sex, marriage, clerics and suchlike. Desire overcame piety. I suppose that it is thanks to our medieval ancestors' habit of breaking canon law that we are here at all.
HG3
Further reading:
Ruth Mazo Karras, Common Women, Prostitution and sexuality in medieval England.
Ruth Mazo Karras, 'Doing unto Others' Sexuality in medieval Europe.
Alan Haynes, Sex in Elizabethan England.
John W Baldwin, The Language of Sex.
Richard Zacks, History Laid Bare: Love, Sex and Perversity from the Ancient Etruscans to Warren G. Harding.
Ed. Nicola McDonald, Medieval Obscenities.